“I have seen no pig. No doubt it will be returned to you, if found.” “Returned! _Hélas_! but a poor return, indeed.” “It will not be?” “The lights, the entrails--a little of the coarser meat, perhaps.” “How is that, then?” “Where we squat, monseigneur, thither come the authorised of the pure blood. ‘These are your bounds,’ say they; and they signify, arbitrarily, any limit that occurs. Woe, then, to the Cagot sheep or pig that strays without the visionary _cordon_! Whoever finds it may kill, reserving to himself the good, and returning to the unhappy owner the inferior parts only of the meat.” “It is of a piece with all I see, here more than elsewhere--the grossest inconsistency where the senses seek gratification. Truly, I think, the emancipation of the race is to be from self-denial.” He gave the man a piece of money--rather peremptorily checking the fulsome benedictions his act called forth--and saw him slink off the way he had come. For all its show of servility, there had appeared something indescribably noble in the poor creature’s rendering of an ignoble part. It was as if, on the stage of life, he were willing to sacrifice his individuality to the success of the piece. Not all scapegoats could so triumph physically through long traditions and experiences of suffering. These Cagots--they might have come from the loins of the wandering Jew. He walked back to Théroigne, his heart even a little less than before inclined to her. She held away from him somewhat, as if he were contaminated. “A fraternity, extending the hand of brotherhood,” he said--repeating some words of hers uttered before the Cagot had intervened--“to whom was mademoiselle about to say? to all, without exception?” She looked at him, half fearful, half defiant. “This man is of the accursed race,” she cried low. “A Jew?” “A Cagot.” “And what is that?” “You do not know? They come from France, where she sits with her feet in the mountains--outcasts, pariahs, with blood so hot that an apple will wrinkle in their hands as if it had been roasted.” “I should have fancied that a recommendation to you of Méricourt.” “Ah, grace of God! With them it is nothing but the emitting of a pestilent miasma. These people are brutes. They would even have tails, but that their mothers are cunning to bite them off when they are newly born.” Ned went into a fit of laughter. “It is true, monsieur.” “It is at least easily proved. And they come from the south?” “From the south and from the west. It is not often we see them here; but this new spirit that is in the air--_mon Dieu_!--it stirs in them, I suppose, with a hope of better times--of release from the restrictions imposed upon them for the safety of the community; and now they will sometimes wander far afield.” “And what are these restrictions?”